


Shelter From the Storm

by kaeorin



Series: Loki's Lullabies [62]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Fear, Literal Sleeping Together, Nervousness, Nighttime, Thunderstorms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:40:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24398902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin
Summary: It is your silliest, most irrational fear, and it’s hard to hide from Loki when he sleeps beside you.
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Reader
Series: Loki's Lullabies [62]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240
Comments: 10
Kudos: 162





	Shelter From the Storm

Maybe it was part of being a human. Maybe, for all the growing and evolving that humans had done over millennia, you were each intended to have one silly, unfounded, childish fear stick with you into adulthood. Maybe, in the grand scheme of things, it had some unexpected, unknown benefit. Maybe it was these little terrors that had led the human species to where it was today. 

Or maybe not.

You had done all the research. You knew that thunder and lightning were perfectly-normal natural phenomena. You knew what caused them, what they meant, how they worked. You knew how to tell when a thunderstorm was turning into something a little stronger. You knew how to get to safety. But none of that did a damn thing to help you when you were lying in bed trying to get to sleep despite the apocalyptic crashing and howling outside your window.

You were a grown woman and you were afraid of thunderstorms. 

All things considered, it was probably one of the better irrational fears that you could have. There were people who were soul-crushingly afraid of pickles, after all, and you were an old pro at navigating a hamburger without having a meltdown. Most of the time, no one even needed to know about the queasy feeling you got when it rained too hard. When you were in the office, you could put on your giant noise-canceling headphones and fixate on your computer screen and get through it. When you were out with friends, you kept your back to any windows that happened to be around and forced yourself to pay attention to what they were saying. When you were by yourself at home, you could either force yourself to ignore it or sit down somewhere and let yourself fall apart because nobody could see you, so what did it matter?

But things had changed. Loki was here. 

Most of the time, you loved having him in your space. You loved feeling sort of trapped here with him. You couldn’t get away, sure, but you didn’t need to. Or want to. The two of you spent a lot of time together, and you were really starting to get used to that. He was seeing a lot more of you than he had in the few months that you’d been together before this lockdown happened. Every single thing that he saw, he seemed to love. Even the things that you did your best to keep hidden. Your depressive episodes. Your unfortunate tendency to glare at yourself for too long in the mirror. While he didn’t quite _love_ those parts of you, neither did he make it seem like they were things that made him re-think this whole “stay here with you” thing that he’d gotten himself into. He never looked at you like he thought they made you crazy. He kept kissing you like you held the answers to questions he had yet to ask.

But this. This felt like it could be the last straw. Loki’s brother had the power of thunder and lightning. Surely Loki had grown up surrounded by the chaos of Thor’s adolescence. He didn’t talk about it much, but it wasn’t hard to imagine the havoc that teenage emotions could wreak on Thor—and, therefore, pretty much anyone and anything around him. Indeed, Loki had only seemed to fall deeper asleep when the weather got worse. He was sleeping soundly beside you, and even though you searched his face after every crash of thunder, he did not so much as twitch.

You twitched plenty enough for the both of you. You’d had your eyes wide open for the better part of an hour, now, staring at the window in hopes of catching the next flash of lightning so you could try to prepare yourself for the thunder. You would count the seconds between the two, another attempt at soothing yourself, but you couldn’t remember what the conversion was between lightning strikes and their distance from you. For every second between lightning and thunder, was that a mile away? Was it a mile for every five seconds? Your fear made it hard to remember anything, so mostly you just counted.

_One one thousand._

_Two one thousand._

_Three one thousand._

Thunder split the night outside your windows. You flinched again. When you were little, when it was still normal for you to be afraid of natural weather phenomena, you’d heard all the stories. Thunderstorms were just angels bowling in heaven. Giants were walking around in the clouds. Gods were angry and dancing and stomping around. All that stuff. They hadn’t helped you much as a kid. Maybe that was why you were still so afraid as an adult.

Your fingers ached from how hard you were gripping the sheets, but you couldn’t make yourself let go. The storm had been raging for almost an hour now—surely it was going to have to burn itself out soon, right? How long could a thunderstorm realistically last? At least tomorrow wasn’t a work day. Already you could tell that you were going to be sleeping in as late as Loki would let you, and that you’d spend most of tomorrow like a zombie in a fog. Maybe it’d stay gray and cloudy tomorrow, so Loki would be more willing to stay in and cuddle on the couch. You could try to fall asleep on his shoulder with Netflix playing in the background. 

Another flash of lightning split the night. It felt, for a brief moment, like the entire room was lit up as though with daylight. 

_One one thou—_

The thunder came quickly, rolling and growling like something living. Something close. It felt like it would never stop. You held your breath.

Loki sighed in his sleep and then rolled onto his side to face you. “That was close,” he mumbled in that sweet, raspy voice he had. That was his three-a.m. voice and normally it made you smile. Tonight your face was frozen. He put his arm around you and moved a little closer. Now that he was touching you, you had no choice but to relax. If you kept twitching and flinching while he wrapped himself around you, you were done for. It took a herculean effort to make your fingers let go of the sheets, but you forced yourself to breathe normally.

Or tried to, anyway. He rubbed his face against your shoulder once, but then sighed again and sat up. He must have felt the tension in your body. He wasn’t completely oblivious, after all, and you were not a good liar. Sure enough, you felt his eyes searching your face in the darkness.

“Are you awake, love?” Fondness colored his words. It was so hard for you to reconcile, sometimes, the way he’d acted the first time he came to Earth with who he actually was in private. If others could see him like this, you knew there was no way they’d keep holding it against him. “Did you have a nightmare?”

You tried not to laugh. By now you were both intimately familiar with the other’s nightmares. Some nights it was your turn to startle awake and seek shelter in his arms. He’d play with your hair and murmur reassuring thoughts to you. Some nights it was his. His always seemed worse to you: he’d wake up shouting or trembling and it always took you forever to soothe him enough to go back to sleep. Maybe the state of the world was making nightmares worse for everyone lately. But you’d been fully awake all night long. Even though it would have been easier to just nod, you heard yourself tell him no.

“It’s... _I’mafraidof_ _thunder_ _stormsokay_?” You couldn’t lie to him, and by now you knew better than to try to hide things. So you let it all out in a single quick rush of air, and then felt your fingers tightening in the sheets. Lightning flashed again, and thunder tore through the air. The sound covered Loki’s laugh, if there was any.

“Of storms?” He sounded thoughtful. Your mind conjured up all the things he could say to you, running through the teasing comments and the bewildered ones before Loki himself could figure out what he actually wanted to say. He sat up a little, propping his head on his hand so he could look at you. His eyes were soft. They were always soft at this time of night. “I’m here. You’re safe. I won’t let anything hurt you.”

Shame rushed through you at that, at the knowledge that you’d expected him to tease you when he only ever wanted to reassure you. “I know.”

He reached out to caress your cheek, smoothing his fingertips against your skin lightly, yet somehow also giving the impression that he was trying to memorize the way you felt. He bent lower to brush his lips against yours. “What can I do?”

 _Find someone else who isn’t an absolute baby._ It was the mean voice in the back of your head, the one that Loki had been working so hard to make go away for you. Before him, you hadn’t thought twice about actually listening to what it had to say. It had always seemed to be speaking the truth about you. But when you made the mistake of repeating what it had to say about you to him, he would look at you with such concern, such...heartbreak, that slowly you were coming to realize that you were wrong. Still, you didn’t want to ask him for anything at all. He’d been sleeping so comfortably before he’d realized that something wasn’t right with you. But he pressed you for an answer, continuing to touch your face even as he hummed a question at you. 

“Could we...” It was kind of a hail-mary, and you definitely felt silly for wanting to ask. “Could we go turn on the television, maybe? To kind of...drown out the sound?”

“Of course.” He said it so easily, so sincerely, that it left no room for feeling guilty or even childish. He slid out of bed and wrapped the comforter around his shoulders—not for himself, you knew, but for you. Then he came around to your side of the bed and helped you to your feet. 

It took some time, but soon enough, the two of you were settled in on the couch. Loki turned on one of the smaller lamps next to the couch, and tucked the blanket around you as you leaned in to him. He turned on the television and then turned up the volume a little, and you didn’t even have to ask. You put your head on his chest. 

Lightning flashed through the window, but you didn’t have to count this time. Loki had his arm around you. He kissed the top of your head. Not once did he give you any kind of impression that he was annoyed or even amused by your silliness.

By the time the thunder rolled through the night, you didn’t even notice.


End file.
